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Friday, 25 August 2006

If I understood this any better, I would be lying through my teeth. Basically, the world has now been overcome with hysteria about air travel that logic fails to feature in any of the so-called reactions taken.

The news wires are now been flooded with the news of a diversion from a Manchester – Chicago flight to Bangor, not the one in Wales but the one after crossing the Atlantic in the state of Maine in the United States of America.

What is really amusing is, if indeed there was a bomb on that plane, why the terrorist did not blow the damn thing up over the North Atlantic rather than wait for it to enter the US air space.

Extradition by stealth

One is also left suspect of the whole issue if a so-called passenger on the security list did get to embark on a flight considering how much information is demanded of airlines, most especially this airline being one of the native airlines – American Airlines.

If this is not a serious and unforgivable lapse in security, then it might be that America is implementing an extradition through the backdoor but allowing suspects to arrive in the United States, creating a diversion melodrama and then nabbing their quarry.

I might at this time be jumping to conclusions and this plane having landed on US soil might have the FBI extricate some sort of evidence no matter how contrived to justify the diversion of this flight – God help you that your name does not sound like Bush, Blair or Bin Laden.

Profiling a typical air traveller

We already know now that if you look different, speak a language other than English, look in your bag to retrieve that pulp fiction or attempt to play one of those games on your mobile phone you are completely done for without redemption.

Let us just agree that air travel is only meant for a particular kind of clone only known to the government, just as your hand baggage should fit into some impossible sizing measurement, you should fit that perfect, ordinary, normal, average buffoon who happens to love subjecting themselves to searches as intimate as would require a gloved hand.

Who compensates for this inconvenience?

However, in some cases, it has been left to those mile-high trolley dollies to profile, assess and subjectively prejudge their passengers and arrive at the preposterous conclusion that a passenger, in the light of increased security, or the plane is somehow in peril.

The trouble with all this inconvenience is that for the supposed misdeeds of one or some passengers who probably have no relationship apart from being brought together on that flight by some flight booking system, the scheduled department and arrival times of others has been put completely out of order.

The question now becomes who would compensate the affected for this outrageous abuse of freedom to travel and liberty to disembark at the original destination.

Indeed, cabin crew vigilance is paramount in these threatening times and I hear that it is good to err on the side of caution, but how much of this exercise of prerogative is intuition, hunch, premonition, supposition, suspicion as opposed to factual analysis of observed circumstances?

As I write, I also hear that a student has checked in a bag containing dynamite on a flight about to depart Argentina.

Conspiracies and opportunities

I am beginning to think this whole thing is becoming a free-for-all conspiracy to completely discredit air travel in favour for a more green earth – not too implausible.

Do we now need a nuclear powered, acoustic iceberg destroyer, ocean liner called 21st Century Titanic and a EuroStar that traverses all closely linked continents – Europe, Asia, Africa?

The Eurotunnel proves that there might be a viable engineering case for a Gibraltar (UK bordering Spain) to Ceuta (Spain bordering Morocco) tunnel to link Africa and Europe under the Straits of Gibraltar – a mere 14 kilometres in length – (the idea is bridge has been suggested) and this air scare times might just make the Channel Tunnel breakeven, at last.

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I have many stories to tell, I am English of Nigerian parentage, I lived in the Netherlands for 12 years, returned to the UK recently but still have wander lust - the rest is somewhere online, most likely in on blogs.